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Floppy CDs And DVDs?
tregoweth writes: "A company (with no online presence that I can find) claims to have developed a way to make 'a completely functional digital disc that's five times thinner than a regular DVD or CD' and 'is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans and be inserted into magazines without breaking,' according to Forbes.com. Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?"
1. How to get manufactures to shell out the money to make these?
2. How scratch/tear resistant are these things? They may be flexible, but don't look very sturdy. What about thermal resistance? It just seems like it would be much easier to screw up all the little pits in information layer and therefore screw the cd-floppy.
3. They also look like they'd be a pain to print on since most paints would be thicker than that the CD-floppy. How do you know which one is which?
4. CD's and thin cases are so cheap now, why do we need this?
5. How do you get stupid consumers to use the plastic adapter ring correctly. I see lots of problems with people misusing it and breaking their CD/DVD players.
I think a neat use for it might be a replacement for the magnetic disc in floppy drives. Get a new drive that reads the things and use technology to fit 1 gig or more onto a floppy. Too bad it won't be writable, but it might help with installation of certain programs on laptops & etc.
I need a funny sig
Actually I think you might be incorrect... bernoulli carts used to use a similar system, iirc, in which the spinning of the disc was stablized the by literal bernoulli effect created.
Better description from here
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
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As for autorequesting, I actually wrote a little program in Visual Basic (ah, the good ole' days... ) to simulate clicks on AOL buttons with WinAPI and then made it request disks to my house with random names and apartment numbers. Since I live in a house, they were all delivered to me anyway.
I still get a nice 30-disk bundle with two rubber bands every now and then...
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Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?
If these new CD's are so cheap, *perhaps* free software distribution will get even simpler.
It would be a step easier to package free cd's with ANY magazine or newspaper and perhaps cheapbytes could rename themselves to dirtcheapbytes.
Flavio
It's paper thin
:(
It stores information
You can get it in any shape or size you want
It allows advertisers to convey information to people
My specialized computer-less reading enables even people without a computer to read the information printed on the 'disk'
It is thin enough and flexible to be wrapped around a coke can
It has a gummed strip along one edge so it can easily be inserted into magazines
Computer users can scan them to they can be fully enjoyed online
In addition to the fantastic advertising properties I can also envisage a market where these partially gummed pieces of paper are sold in pads to corporate users. They could then be used as a digital memo system which could even be accessed without a computer, by using a special digital pen to write messages on them.
Just call me Mr 3m.
On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters
I'm pretty sure this is the last we'll ever hear about "ThinDisc" or whatever on slashdot. The idea is absurd. If a company wants to supply their software to magazine readers, they'll supply a web address, not a ThinDisc. If I ever came accross one of these items "wrapped around a coke can" or in a magazine, I'd do what the rest of the world would do with it as well; see how good of a frisbee it makes (hey, maybe AOL does have a calling for these things)!
Anyway, I'm still waiting for indestructible credit card sized storage devices that can hold 6 terrabytes by means of optical pulses.
At this rate something tells me I'll be waiting for an awfully long time.
What does it mean to be five times thinner ? To me, it means nothing. Five times thinner than what? Why can't people say, "One fifth as thick..." Hell, I'd even settle for "One fifth as thin"
If the disk had any bend in it when it was being read by the CDROM drive, I don't believe the laser would be reflected at the angle needed to read the disk. This would cause slow, unreliable data transfer at best, and make the format completely useless at worst.
This post is brought to you by the letters T and A, and the number 69
No, his point was that "thinner" measures thickness. So "five times thinner" is actually five times thicker. To say what they really meant, you'd have to say "one fifth as thick." Incidentally, as long as I'm being pedantic, five times thicker would be actually equivalent to 6 CDs stacked, not 5, because it's the comparitive form of the adjective, meaning you're adding, not replacing. Five times as thick would be equivalent to 5 CDs.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
did it ever mention how much it holds? it said thinner then cdroms/dvds.. but it never said if he even neared the volume cdroms could hold... maybe it doesn't even hold 1.44MB :)
I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?
SAVINGS! that's the brilliant part. You save on material and manufacture dirt cheap CDs.
I believe there's not much of a deformation problem at high speeds, since the CD is supposedly uniformly dense and as flat as possible. You could theoretically rotate this at infinite angular speed in vacuum without deformation. I suppose it could bend abnormally if you consider the drive's inner air circulation at extremely high speeds, but we're not there yet.
You've got a valid point about scratches, but there are two points to cover that:
1. error correction.
2. this media isn't designed for very reliable storage. it's for AOL cd's and, as I suggested in another post, dirt cheap linux propaganda. if the target's interested in the data he acquires the normal CD version if needed.
I think the idea's great, but it kind of depends on how easily these things can be pressed.
Flavio
Right...four years of development, and no product demonstration..
I guess this worry is obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Does this technological "advance" set us back years in terms of coaster technology? First there were the 3.5" floppy discs, which were effective against desk coffee cup ring-marks but could accomodate only a rather small amount of the surface area of a cup (at least, *my* cup). Then came the CD's, which improved coaster surface area at the expense of a condensation-permitting hole. Now where do these skimpy CD's fit in? Not only are they holed, their thinness makes me doubt their viability as an obstruction to coffee cup moisture. Further, I anticipate that the lightness of the floppy CD will make it stick annoyingly to the bottom of a lifted coffee cup--a characteristic universally recognized as the hallmark of a poorly designed coaster.
Truly this is a sad day for coaster technology.You bring up some good points, i'd mod you up if i had the power. You missed one of the key point in the forbes article, where they mention one of the hurdles of the technology:
"consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record"
I'd like to see more info on this ring (heck on the technology itself for that matter), maybe they're using the ring for rigidity and optical refraction, and the floppy stuff would just be the top layer with the data on it.
They'll probably rely on AOL to send out the first wave of floppy CD's plus the ring, and then everything following would just be the top layer (assuming most of the human race would have one by then).
smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter...They're cool and tiny and should be the future
/. crowd can smell a cash-grab like a fart in a car, and sony is universally noted for stinkers.
They're proprietary and useless. Remember: the
"And if it's true, that plastic is not degradable, well! the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the Earth plus plastic."
-- George Carlin
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
Well if you will spin things at infinite speed, what do you expect? Hang on a sec, just how are you proposing to spin them up to infinite speed? With an infinitely powerfull motor, driven by an infinite watt power supply?
Don't be absurd He's going to use an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of DECWriters, all hooked up to a big Willy Wonkaesque machine that not only produces an infinite amount of chocolate, but drives a spindle as well. It's all quite simple, really.
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i don't know about AOL CD's, they'll be everywhere no matter what media is introduced, but, i do see kids using floppy CD's to come up with inventive new ways to hide their CD's that are full of JPEGs.
think about it... they could keep in in their shoes, in their wallets, in pez dispensers, i see the porn industry making a killing here among the 15-17 industry (because once you turn 18, porn loses it's novelty because you can buy it)
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
I remember them. You could supposedly drop one off the roof of a building in the middle of a read/write operation and not loose any data or damage the media from the impact.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I think I see what's happening here.
CD-ROM's have been around for some time now. The market is aging.
With the aging market, the formerly rigid disks have more trouble. Sometimes, they go flaccid without any clear cause.
The good news is that this may liven up a market for Viagra.
When tape was still a valid media? These were the first demo discs, i guess. You had to dub the record to an audio tape, then use it on your computer. And it never, ever, worked.
when Push Comes to Shove
Coming soon to tree branches everywhere...complete with silk-screened pictures of clock faces?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
This is not a particularly difficult technology, all you have to do is bond the aluminum to mylar rather than polycarbonate, but I see a couple of problems. First you would have a short life span, the discs would get pretty scratched up in just regular use, but this is really not an issue for a disposable disc format. Secondly, and more importantly, the discs would not be compatible with all drives, and would be prone to read errors, and jamming drives during ejection. I can see the tech support calls already, "Hi, I installed your software, and it hosed my drive, please send me xxx dollars to replace it.
heh.. obvously none of you have heard of ab.
g e=index.htm|Image=1" -n 2000 -c 100
try it out:
ab "http://www.thindisc.com/_vti_bin/fpcount.exe/?Pa
quickly add 2,000 hits to their counter
5 times thinner than a CD...
Can be wrapped around a soda can...
5 1/4" floppies could do this years ago!
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...
They should put up a slashbox that shows the current stats for slashdot.
It would be interesting to see and also be a great advertisement for Open Source Software in a high stress environment.
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
I think the main use of these will be in areas that can be considered "promotion," but there's a huge amount of money spent there every year. Ignore the possibility of these being 50% of the cost - how much would AOL save each year by eliminating the postage on 80% of the CD's weight?
Say a CD weighs 0.5 oz (which is close), if they can find a way to get that down to 0.1 oz, they can probably get a little creative with the packaging and get a mailer that's below 1 oz (or 2, or any other integer up to 13). They're paying a bulk mailing rate rather than one-off first class rates, but if they paid the latter then going from 1.6 oz to 1.2 they'd have a real incentive to shave off that last 0.2 oz. Right now, standard first-class mail rates are $0.33 for the first ounce, plus $0.22 for each additional. If AOL sent 10 million CDs a year out at those rates, it could save them 2.2 million dollars a year on postage. Even if their savings would only be a quarter that amount, would they switch for a $550,000/year savings just on postage if it didn't have any adverse effect?
These things are also much more disposable - if you're producing something that you want people to be able to use for a month or two but you really don't care beyond that, then these are great - less cost to produce them, and by the time the breakage percentage gets up to areas that you'd be concerned about the material on the disks is out of date anyway. Heck, if they could I suspect there are companies who'd love to have CDs that would intentionally become unreadable after a short time, the problem is that it can't be anything that might muck up someone's CD-ROM drive.
As to the question of reliability, maybe they start to stress after a few hours of spin and become unreadable. So what? As long as they don't actually break apart, what's the problem if your disposable CD needs to be disposed of?
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
But you couldn't possibly be expected to read the article. I mean, you had that first post to shoot for.
Can you stick them in a microwave for a nice light show?
They're not proprietory -- they've been in the CD standards since the beginning. Go to a decent second hand CD store and you should find a couple of old music ones stashed away somewhere...
um - special hardware IS needed - unless you've had that special experience of disassembling a slot-loading CD ROM drive to get one of these little motherfuckers out.
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I say there should be mandatory warning labels on these non-circular CDs.
I know they don't fit into slot loading drives,
You know they don't fit into slot loading drives.
But my #$)%*)(@#$!!! mother-in-law doesn't know. Well, she knows now. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
http://www.thindisc.com/ Not much there now, but it was the same with Transmeta's site :) As of posting, the counter is 490.
The article mentions that they can be moved around like a Fruit Rollup. Now what -I- want to see is for them to actually use them in Fruit Rollup packages, replacing that annoying cellifane wrap!
That'd be like a snack and a movie that I could carry in my pocket. Mmmmm....
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Let me give you the lowdown
It seems to me that this is not really a CD project yet. Sure they can make it in the shape of a CD, but until they can make the thing spit out of a front loaded CD changer, or make a CD-ROM read it at all (as it seems they still have not from the article) this is just a pretty circle that you can read with their own special drive...
Soon, however, I hope to see guys doing good work like this make some money, and then I can play frisbee with something that doesn't hurt my hands quite as much as those AOL coasters I use now...
hmmmm?
I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?
I'll concede perhaps a faster spinup time since they're lighter, but will these flimsy CDs be able to withstand rotations at 70X without deforming? What about scratches? Most of the thickness of current CDs and DVDs is a protective coating. The real disc itself is extremely thin. Anyone can remove lacquer, it's just making sure that the disc is still worth using afterwards that's important.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Now all we need is a jewel case that's 5 times as brittle as standard jewel cases.
GONE FISHING
The aluminum layer containing the pits is actually right under the label. The polycarbonate has to be a certain thickness with the right index of refraction such that the laser beam coming in at the right angle will find the pit and return at the correct angle for the detector.
Furthermore, because CDs are so thick, the point at which the laser enters the plastic is a good ways away from the focal point of the laser (on the pit). This means that the laser enters the CD over a large surface area (many many times the size of a pit), just one factor that makes CDs resistant to dust and scratching.
Even if you were able to play with the index of refraction of your material such that you could get the cd to work when it is thinner, your CD would be more suseptible to dust and scratches (face it, CDs aren't great now). In the applications suggested here, I'd think that might be something of an issue.
At the very least expect it not to work in many drives just because it can't be held in place properly. My CD-ROM operates on its side. To work like that the cradle has little clips on the sides to hold the CD. That obviously relys on the CD's rigidity. Also think of walkmans that use ball bearings in the center hole to hold on to a CD.
Reminds me of the item in Brainstorm(1983). Imaginge a reel-to-reel tape player, but intead of a black magnetic tape, it was all reflective n shiny like a CD.
Me, I'd think that the business-card CDs and CD-Rs you see at trade shows and advertised in the classifieds would have become more common than they are by now; no special hardware needed to play them, while the article on the ThinDisc mentioned a need for a hub adaptor. Since I haven't seen the former taking off, I have trouble imagining the latter will actually see widespread use - and that's neglecting the notions of "vaporware" already making the rounds here on /.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
Try www.thindisc.com, or a search on Google which turned up the name of the company in connection with several venture capital firms.
Any spoon would be too big.
There is a second, smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter. Sony use them in their new digital camera. They only store about 180MB when standard CD technolgy is used, but Sony has that double CD density technology, and if you did a DVD in that size you'd be able to fit over 4Gig in a double sided, double layered disk. They're cool and tiny and should be the future.
and prints out a story like this one.
Yes, the (soon to be patented) Slashdot Vaporware Generator.
Believe the hype.
I would think centrifugal force (ok, intertia for all you refrence frame nitpicks) would have some stabilizing factor. I'm not sure what the plastic adapter disk looks like, but perhaps that could provide stiffening as well. Anyway, the point is that these can be manufactured more easily for promotional type deals, not as a safe storage medium for important data. I can see this-there are zillions of cheap CDs kicking around that you wouldn't use more than once or twice--video game demos, etc. What I want to know is: Do they still spark in the microwave?
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